Amritsar letters

QUESTION

India’s performance at the Olympics has been best so far as it won highest number of medals ever, clinching the first gold in athletics and finishing on podium in men’s hockey after 41 years. Do you think the governments (Centre and states) are doing enough to support players and what steps should they take to take India to the top-10 in the medal tally at the 2024 Paris Olympics?

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Headline: Increase fund allocation, create stadiums in each district

Strap: Govt needs to provide enabling environment to nurture sportspersons; cut corruption, political intervention: Residents

Give free education to players’ wards

Yes, the Central and respective state governments are supporting players. The governments should encourage the players by offering them more rewards, prizes and monetary appreciations if they win medals in 2024 Paris Olympics. Secondly, they should offer players government jobs so that the players are enthused to take maximum medals in the next Olympics. Last but not the least, the governments should provide free education for wards of outstanding players.

Sanjay Chawla

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Asking for the moon

India’s performance at the Tokyo Olympics, though, the best of the past ones, puts us in 48th place among the participating nations. It is enough to tell how much our government is doing to support players and games. To take India to the top-10 in the medal tally at the 2024 Paris Olympics is to ask for the moon. Rome was not built in a day. To make Olympian, years of rigorous and scientific training is required with the best coaching techniques with the latest equipment and world-class infrastructure. Can we expect a network of AstroTurfs, swimming pools, gymnasiums, playing grounds/courts in our villages, towns and tribal areas in a couple of years from where most of our present Olympians hail? Financial support is required at the training time-monetary rewards to the medal winners notwithstanding. To uplift sports, long-term planning is required. For 2024, what the governments can do is to prepare the list of all international, national and state-level players and along with the current Olympians give them all best possible training and support, especially financial. Most importantly, our youngsters need to stop idolising film stars and cricketers and stop blindly sporting those politicians as are self-centred and are non/ill performers as for as people’s welfare is concerned.

Hira Sharma

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Maintain existing infrastructure

Sports came naturally to the Punjabi youth. The government has been formulating various schemes such as Khelo Punjab etc., but they failed to yield desired results. In November, 2011, in the run up to the 2012 Assembly elections, the then deputy CM had laid foundation stone of International-level sports stadium just adjacent to Anand Amrit Park at Ranjit Avenue, Amritsar. In the last 10 years, the site has deteriorated to a garbage dump and no one in the government is ashamed of it. The governments have altogether different priorities and development of sports and sports persons is only up to the level of lip service. Priorities of governance must change. However, individual sportspersons will continue to shine despite lack of support.

Abhiraj Singh Bajwa

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Dire need to invest in sports

Medals won decide the supremacy of any country in the field of sports in Olympics. Indian sportspersons have shown a promise and potential in the recently concluded Olympic Games. The Central Government’s initiative of Khelo India two years ago was a step in the right direction. But it takes years of toil and perspiration in preparation for a stellar performance to bring medals. Our sportspersons show all physical and mental attributes such as perseverance, tenacity, never say die attitude and skills which make an Olympic frame of mind. But there is a dire need to provide infrastructure of the Olympic level, investment and proper incentives to the players to ensure their peak performance. Rigorous and persistent full time training including climatic acclimatisation, proper nutrition and rest, regular honing and testing of skills, talent hunt, recruiting former Olympians as coaches and sports psychologists, creating world class facilities, are the areas which demand state governments’ attention besides allocation in sports budget. We should also stretch interest in sports from school to the level of the college. The governments should plan at least twenty years ahead of dreaming about the medals in Olympics.

Anil Khanna

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Long-term strategy needed to bag medals

We should not take short-term measures to increase our medal tally in Olympics but to plan long-term strategy to achieve this goal. Children from schools should be picked up for different games and given proper training and nutritious diets for healthy growth. In the early 60s, then Chief Minister Punjab Partap Singh Kairon established Pandit Moti Lal Nehru School of Sports at Rai in Sonipat district with sports facilities of Olympic standard. He was a great visionary leader but afterwards we never heard of any such sports school anywhere in the country. What to ask about the sports facilities in schools, now even private schools are opening up in congested residential areas. In good old days educational institutions such as Khalsa College were established with numerous grounds for games like hockey and football. We are to revisit the past and start grooming our players from very young age.

Naresh Johar

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Corporates should contribute to sports

Whatever little we have achieved in sports is due to efforts of Central and State Governments or individual players, who mostly belong to poor families. Not even a single participant in such international games comes from corporate houses. Big corporate never contribute for sports except Cricket which is not an Olympic sport. They liberally donate to political parties to fight elections but never for the cause of sports. On the pattern of corporate social responsibility, a similar mandatory provision should be made for corporate contribution for sports. Secondly, all state governments should take a lesson from Haryana government which gives substantial amount in form of cash rewards for winners of national and international games. This is a great incentive to athletes coming from poor families. It is rightly quoted in an article in the Tribune that Indian sport is powered by the poor. They are not recreational sportspersons, what fires them up is the lure of a better life. Haryana government provided such facilities to sportspersons. See the results, 24 per cent of country’s athletes in Tokyo Olympic were from Haryana whose population is just 2.1 percent of country’s population.

Harsh Johar

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Tap raw talent in rural areas

Much has been said and printed on the unprecedented achievements of our players and athletes, women and men, who represented India at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics concluded recently. They are getting hero’s welcome and a red carpet reception everywhere. Fine. They earned it. They deserve it. However, it cannot be gainsaid that by and large, the sports culture as such is totally absent in our country. You hardly ever see a Hockey or Football ground abuzz with players. There are no inter- class or inter-school matches. Javelin and discus are foreign to our boys. Only some highly informed parents groom their wards for individual sports. Regarding governments, they aspire after medals but usually without a matching economic support. In this connection, much can be learnt from the Odisha Government which had taken up the responsibility of training, feeding and housing our men’s Hockey team. The results are before us. A similar policy should be visible in other states too, if better performance and more medals are expected at Paris, only three years away. The few training academies run by ex-sportsmen such as Pargat Singh should be funded liberally sans any politics or favours. All boils down to more grounds, more tracks, more coaches and more recognition. Universities and colleges such as GNDU, Khalsa College, Amritsar, and DAV, Jalandhar, are replete with talent and no one should be surprised if one or more medals at Paris will be won by players from there provided these institutions are provided facilities. The golden rule is that raw talent existing in the rural areas should be tapped and developed.

Mohan Singh

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Emulate initiatives taken by Odisha government

No doubt we have done well at the Tokyo Olympics but we can do much better, if we emulate Odisha Government like initiatives at state and national levels. Tokyo has seen India score its biggest ever medal haul of 7 but rank only 48 in the overall tally. To great extent excellent performances of Indian hockey men and women is due to Odisha Government which had set up excellent sporting infrastructure in Bhubaneswar, where top tournaments were held and national teams were sponsored by it. When it comes to hockey, the focus has been on the performance of men’s team, which in the last few decades couldn’t find any place in Olympics. However, their 2020 Tokyo Olympic performance which led to the end of over four decades of drought is praiseworthy. Indian women hockey team’s accomplishment of reaching the Olympic semifinals for the first time by defeating Australia is an important one in its journey. Our women entering semifinals along with our men doing the same can be seen as the sporting half, their Olympic performance is another proof how our sports-women can break through social barriers in our society. Sexism and feminism is found worldwide, bur in India it gets much more prohibitive. Ultimately sports are a reflection of our society, still the tide is turning. Boxing medallist Mary Kom inspired Lovelina who will do the same for future medalists. Hopefully, this sterling performance of sports-women will catalyse greater interest from both the fans and administrators in men and women’s hockey and other sports.

LJS Panesar

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Create better facilities within the country

The best-ever performance by India at this year’s Olympics show that the government has provided good facilities this year vis-a-vis previous years. But the fact is that Neeraj Chopra had to train overseas to win the gold medal in Javelin throw. It is a good thing that the government has invested heavily in his training by providing monetary support. If all these facilities are created in our home country, many more athletes will be able to benefit from it. There was a provision of creating an athletics track in the GNDU, but it could not see the light of day, ultimately affecting the players’ performance. There should be minimum red-tapism in the Sports Department so that good facilities can be provided to the budding athletes.

Jatinderpal Singh Batth

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Politics from sports bodies must be rooted out

Both Central and State Governments are not doing enough to support players and athletes. Whatever our Olympians have achieved at the Tokyo Olympics has been achieved on their own efforts. Despite our population size, we have not been able to leave an indelible mark on the international level sports. We have bagged seven medals at Tokyo Olympics but a much smaller country Jamaica, a West Indies island nation, has garnered four gold medals. There must be no place for any complacency as winning one gold medal is not an exceptional achievement. If India is to be among the top-10 in the medal tally at the 2024 Paris Olympics, the governments will have to create a better system for the players. A considerable investment should be made in facilities, coaches and talent hunts at the grassroots to promote sports culture, Politics from the sports bodies of the states and the Centre must be rooted out. Sportspersons should be given good diet, world-class facilities and certain other conditions so that they can develop their talent and potential properly to vie at the world stage. Sportspersons of the lower grade should not be ignored but should be supported wholeheartedly to enable them break into the top echelons of their respective disciplines and should be provided international exposure. Centres of excellence should be operated optimally and their functioning should be streamlined. These centres should be made residential for full-time training and must provide all facilities to the selected sportspersons such as top class lodging, boarding, coaching diet and even pocket money. Land should be given and investment in sports infrastructure should be made through public private partnership model. The athletes and players should be provided career security through jobs in public as well as private sectors. More sports academies should be established across the state and made easily accessible to the upcoming and budding sportsmen and women. Some business magnates and tycoons should be solicited to support and patronise sportspersons. Red-tapism involved in sports should be eradicated. Players should be selected purely on merit basis without any other consideration. More funds should be earmarked for promoting, developing and marketing sports.

Tarsem S Bumrah

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Real talent exits in small towns, rural areas

India had to wait for over four decades to win an Olympic medal in hockey in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Neeraj Chopra made the nation proud by winning the first gold medal in javelin throw. There are many others in the Indian contingent, who did their best to keep the country’s standard high. Yet, what took so long for the country to bag an Olympic medal in hockey?

Though the government knows how to welcome them back home after their remarkable win in the Olympics, India obviously lacks the infrastructure to groom budding talent in different sports. The little that is available in the name of facilities is exclusive to metropolitan cities, though a majority of the country’s sporting talent exists in small towns and rural areas. This is evident from the fact that a number of India’s iconic sports persons hail from areas with little facilities to hone their skills. Still, they managed to script history through their own resolute will and hard work. The government should identify promising young sports talent, besides raising adequate sports infrastructure in the cities and villages all across the nation to train them properly in their respective fields to make it to the top-10 in the medal tally at the 2024 Paris Olympics.

Shaheen P Parshad

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PPP reason for good performance

India capped off its best-ever performance in the Olympics 2020 with a haul of seven medals, including a gold. Indian Men’s hockey team finally ended their quest to earn an Olympic medal in Tokyo, as the young side claimed a bronze medal, defeating Germany in a tense battle. The manner, in which the players carried themselves on the pitch, shows us that the best of Indian hockey is yet to come. Public/private partnership is responsible for India’s seven medals and India’s medal quest was supported by corporates. The Target Olympic Podium Scheme or TOPS was launched in 2014 under the aegis of the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports.

The chief objective of the scheme is to provide financial assistance and other help to athletes in their pursuit of medals in the Olympics and other international sporting events. Under this scheme, athletes and sportspersons will get customised training from top coaches at modern and well-equipped sports facilities and institutions. The sportspersons are also given assistance for buying sport-specific equipment. They are also provided with help in participating in international sporting events and also for the appointment of their support staff such as physiotherapists, sports psychologists, physical trainers, etc. All these efforts by government would pave a way towards biggest win in upcoming 2024 Paris Olympics.

Parampreet Kaur